I’m going to ask Santa for these for Christmas:

There’s a block for all 44 presidents plus a block with the Presidential Oath. Each block has a portrait of the president, presidential order number, life dates and when assembled correctly, they also display as an American Flag. So, so cool! And, you knew it was coming, you can also use them to sing:THE PRESIDENT’S NAME SONG!

Fun Items for Singing President’s Name Song

Of course one can enjoy singing the Presidents Name Song (and learning the names of all the presidents in order) with a book a a placemat, but Iv’e found a few other items that are also fun to sing along with. You can find these items from many online vendors using your favorite search engine. Many of these items are available at Washington, DC and Smithsonian museum gift shops or the online stores of places like the United States Mint.

Alt: “The United States Presidents”
Alt: (When the times come for the people of the United States to elect new presidents, just change the number and add the presidents’s names to the end, for example, “The Forty-Five Presidents,” etc.

Alt: You’ll also need to fit the president’s name into the end of the rhyme. For the 45th and 46th presidents, one could sing thier names to the “…and many more” tune like at the end of “Happy Birthday” and keep doing that until one has enough names to fit in to the rhyme scheme of the original tune.

I thought that the Presidents Name Song would make a mighty fine song for my daughter’s Brownie Troop, so made a lyric sheet and wrote a little something about why I think this song is important:

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At the time I’m writing this, the 2012 Presidential Election Season is in full swing. Regardless of what candidate your family supports, it seems to me that joyfully learning this song will be useful to the girls for several reasons.

First, it’s helpful to know the names of the United States Presidents for history lessons. And, singing the names of the presidents in this song might spark their interest to know more. Or, when they come across any of the Presidents’ names in classroom lessons, they will already feel familiar with the person’s name and have an idea of where the name fell in the list and thus will already have a grasp of the timeline relative to the amount of time the United States has been a country.

Also, at least for me, knowing this song gives a little perspective. Even if one’s candidate doesn’t win (and throughout history there have been many people’s candidates, the opponents of the winners on this list, for example, who have not won) you can feel sure that there will be another chance for your values to be better represented in just a few year’s time. That’s the glory of the American Democracy, George Washington’s greatest precedent: the peaceful abdication of power every 4 or 8 years.

It will be very interesting to discover if we’ll need to update this sheet in just a couple of months!